No Drones Over My Back Yard, Google’s Schmidt Warns

April 17, 2013

Privacy watchdogs, you can breath a bit easier. Google (GOOG) won’t be trading in its fleet of Street View cars for neighborhood-mapping surveillance drones any time soon—that is, if Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt has any say in the matter.

In comments made to the Guardian, Schmidt called for international regulation of civilian drone technology and, going a step further, for an outright ban of inexpensive “everyman”minidrones. Schmidt’s comments are the most forceful yet by a technology executive on the need to protect individuals’ privacy from a promising high-tech growth sector.